----[Please read http://ercoupers.com/disclaimer.htm before following any advice in this forum.]----Bob; Does your strut have any fluid in it at all? The Alon's all came with Belleville springs which give a much nicer ride over rough terrain than the rubber doughnuts.
If your strut is serviced with hydraulic fluid, and you push it up, you should feel a slight restriction along with hearing the fluid go through the orifice into the piston. When you are landing, the aircraft weight and landing force create much more of a force than you do with your arm.
In order to determine exactly what you need, I would recommend first checking to see if there is any play in the doughnut (Belleville spring) stack when you have jacked up the Alon to take the weight off the gear. If there is any play, it should be removed, which requires removing the cylinder and disassembling the doughnut (Belleville spring) stack. I just finished working on an Ercoupe which had the spacers installed, but the tail was still sitting at about 69 inches. There was about 3/16 inch of play in the doughnut stack when there was no weight on the gear. I added two of the regular doughnut spacers on the bottom of each stack, and the play was removed along with the tail height being brought up to 73 inches plus. There is some information on minimum doughnut thickness in the service manual, but my experience with the doughnuts is that they loose their resiliency in less than a year.
As I stated in prior emails, in order to replace/repair the doughnut (Belleville spring) stack, one needs to make a fixture to do the job. You can use a large C clamp to do the work, or two small bar clamps with pieces of metal across the top and bottom of the strut which the clamps can put pressure on. You must compress the strut about 3/4 inch to gain access to the snap ring on the top of the cylinder. You can pry the snap ring out of its groove using a couple electricians (thin bladed) screw drivers. Make sure you turn the bell shaped fitting on the top so that the ends of the snap ring are exposed in one of the holes before you compress the strut. Once you get the hang of it, you can R&R, disassemble, and repair the whole thing in less than 15 minutes.
As far as servicing, assuming the O ring is in good shape, and the cylinder is clean, you can put the hydraulic fluid in the cylinder piror to installing it back on the airplane. Just fill it until the fluid comes out of the filler hole and hold it in an upright position while installing. You don't even have to take the rubber bumper off the stop. However, you do have to jack the aircraft up until the wheel is hanging vertically and not touching the ground.
And obviously remove the bottom bolt on the strut.
Good Luck.
Don't forget, if you are going to install the rubbers on the bottom, you will need to use brake fluid and not hydraulic fluid to fill the struts.
Lynn Nelsen
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